Exile
by Aleph Null
Summary: The final war has started, and instead of fighting for his family and beliefs, Draco Malfoy must endure the shame of being transferred to Durmstrang. 'For your safety,' his mother had said, but Draco's finding that isn't the whole story.


It was cold. Draco stood at the top of a turret, staring into the sky. To his right the sun was setting, caustic sodium orange yet castrated and heatless. This far north it lacked the energy to get much above the horizon even in the middle of the day, and so the shadows are always long, the land grey. The trees moved in the wind, the ice on them hissing, yet despite this otherworldliness there was enough wildlife even on these frozen marshes that a lone owl could not realistically be spotted.  
  
His Hermes could fly this far, just, but he had sent her out over a month ago and still heard nothing. He should have let his father buy him an owl of the type Durmstrang recommended - an Arctic owl, dirty white and adapted to this far-flung corner of the world - but that would have been admitting that this was all happening to him.  
  
What with the endless northern half-light, dark from December through February, it had all sunk in pretty fast. Nothing else to do in those shivering weeks when he hadn't adjusted to the cold but think, and lies didn't live long in such a harsh environment. The translation charm he'd hastily memorised when told of this relocation didn't work very well, and he couldn't use it to make enough sense of the Russian books in the library in order to improve it. He walked round the school until he discovered that none of it was actually heated regularly - character building, he supposed - and then staked out a corner near the fire in one of the study rooms, like the other pupils did. None of them pupils paid much attention to him, even though he was Draco Malfoy and new and from a part of the world where things actually happened.  
  
Stood up on the rooftop, he rather wished things weren't happening and that he wasn't so desperate for news. It had been four months now and all he'd received were two letters of nothing much from his mother, containing more talk about how beautiful the garden looked than mention of what was going on, and not a word about his father. Only a week ago he'd realised that this was probably because she couldn't bear to talk about it, and was immediately struck with a wave of love and homesickness which made him double up with pain in his bed of furs. That night he'd pulled the wolfskins tight round himself, but hadn't been able to sleep.  
  
In quiet moments the memory of that last day in Britain always came whispering back, slipping around the blocks he'd tried to put in place in his mind. For weeks he'd known that something was up, something was about to go very wrong in his life. He knew about the impending war, of course, yet with the self-absorption of the young and naive didn't think that that would be his problem. God, he remembered how distant it all felt - the whispers of his father and his friends, the air of tension that pervaded even Slytherin house at school - more distant, even, than it did now, when he ached to simply know what was happening.  
  
It had struck him, after a couple of weeks, that the silence at Durmstrang regarding the events in Britain was unnatural. The school was known, at least in the UK, for its Dark Arts affinity, and yet the name Voldemort had not even been mentioned. Karkaroff had been a fucking Death Eater, for pity's sake, and yet nothing. His hopes rose - perhaps his father had sent him here for a purpose! - and for over a month he searched for a possible Death Eater cell. The language barrier was difficult, and though the school was smaller than Hogwarts he kept getting on lost anyway. The effort Draco put in made him desperate to find something, but in the end he had to conclude his search as fruitless. Here in the North they weren't involved in anything, and here in the North was purgatory.  
  
With nothing else to occupy his time, Draco started concentrating in lessons. The masters, as they called them here (there were no female teachers, and few female pupils), were strict in an impassive Slavic way which made Snape seem melodramatic and petty. They taught and the students listened, and dissent never raised its head. Nevertheless, there was one subject, Comparative Magic, which was regarded much the same as Muggle Studies was at Hogwarts; distastefully fashionable to the older wizarding families (the damnable Weasleys excepted, as ever).  
  
Draco was all set to dislike it, until he discovered that Master Vitebsky was well travelled and even spoke French. Being a Malfoy, Draco was at least conversant in this tongue, and was quietly happy when the older man set up a weekly session for them to sort out his language difficulties. In the end Vitebsky decided that Draco should borrow the Babelquill he had used for his studies in Paris, which translated Russian to French better than the mangled Russian to English of Draco's translation charm. From then on, Draco was able to understand most of what he was taught, and followed avidly the amicable teacher's lessons.  
  
The topic that year was modern tribal magic, and most of the class jeered when Vitebsky introduced shamanism and the native peoples of Russia's far north. The quill didn't translate their insults very well, but it was clear from the tones of everyone's voices that they thought them unimportant. Draco had to agree - if Muggle Russians could conquer them then they couldn't be much use. Over the next couple of weeks the lessons dragged. Master Vitebsky spent hours talking about the way their shamans transformed into animals, but this didn't seem much different from the Animagus transformation, which Draco had tried and failed to learn the previous summer. 


End file.
